


Belonging

by pringleshop (Jebbler)



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, College AU, F/F, Mental Health Issues, Polyamory, Trans Character, a fanfiction in which lapis isn't the one with all the emtional problems, it doesn't really start out with jaspis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5862589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jebbler/pseuds/pringleshop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I love polyamory and Peridot's probably polyamourous as heck, so these are some drabbles for and her gfs</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belonging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hello! If you don't like Jaspis you shouldn't really read this chapter. I mean it's not explicit and it's just implied but just to be safe.
> 
> (also i have limited knowledge on how college works please ignore any silly mistakes i make)

Jasper’s computer screen lit the entirety of her room and her eyes strained under it. She normally wasn’t one to sit in a dark room alone without at least turning a lamp on but Jasper had gotten caught in what she called a ‘work vortex’ and was unable to get out.

The girl had been sitting in front of her computer for hours now, staring at her copy of Flash and trying to will something resembling quality to appear. Of course it hadn’t and she was unable to make it appear herself.

Groaning, Jasper rested her face on the cold surface of her art tablet. Maybe she should just drop out of college. Who needs a degree in animation anyways? Certainly not her, there was no need to pay ridiculous amounts of money to study art as far she could see. But here she was, doing just that.

She knew that she should stop herself from getting too deep into this mental torment but that would take effort. Like everything else in her life. Maybe her mom was right.

Groaning even harder Jasper mentally winced as the shrill voice of her uptight mother came barreling into her head. Things like ‘You don’t need to waste your life on fruitless endeavors’ and ‘You have such a bright future, you could be anything!’.

That was pretty much how their last meeting ended. Pretty much how all her phone calls with her ended too. And, while there was a sensible part of Jasper that knew she shouldn’t get hung up on the horrible opinions of her mother, there was a bigger part of her that knew she could just give up and agree. Go running home, cut her hair, change her pronouns back to he/him.

Quit animating.

Jasper sucked breath sharply through her clenched teeth, feeling the all too familiar prick of tears come to her eyes. She couldn’t and wouldn’t do any of that. Just thinking about it sent her spiraling into a void even worse than the work void. It was only a matter of time before she fell back into being depressed again anyways. As if it were on a timer and she could count the days until another bout of dissociation.

Just when she was in the middle of sobbing like a baby, like she probably needed to, her door opened with Peridot coming in and Jasper barely turned to face her.

“Jasper! Stop forgetting to lock your door what if-” She paled and stopped mid sentence, her next words were rife with worry and confusion, “A-are you crying!? What happened?”

Jasper wanted to talk, she really wanted to explain away why she was crying and ease her girlfriend’s worry, but she couldn’t. Her jaw had locked up and she had to fight for her lips not to tremble.

Peridot stepped backwards and behind the threshold of her door, she was probably sweating, the poor thing. Jasper knew her girlfriend had no earthly idea how to comfort her, psychically or emotionally, and was actually very unnerved by things like this. She felt bad now too, putting her through that. Jasper really should’ve locked her door.

“L-Lapis!!!” Peridot skittered off to the other side of the house, where Lapis resided, probably getting advice from her or something.

Jasper just didn’t care anymore and resumed her previous position, sobbing on top of her art tablet but this time with her legs perched ‘criss cross applesauce’ style in her chair.

Minutes later and Jasper felt a presence behind her at her open door. This time she didn’t even care enough to turn around.

“Jasper?” The voice wasn’t Peridot’s but Lapis’. Ugh.

Jasper didn’t hate Lapis but Lapis certainly hated her. Lapis was Peridot’s other girlfriend and on good days they only slightly antagonized each other. Most days were good ones (thank god), however there were times when they could get at each others throats, leaving Peridot to lock herself up in her room away from the arguing. No one was happy then.

“Are you alright?” At Least Lapis had the decency to sound concerned.

“Why do you care?”

Lapis set down at the head of Jasper’s bed which was conveniently right next to the computer desk. It was an odd sight to see someone like Jasper, a 6”5’ goddess built primarily out of muscle, breakdown in front of her. She could understand why Peridot needed her to comfort Jasper now, this was almost too much to look at for Lapis and she had considered herself good with handling others emotions.

“Because I do,” Lapis frowned when the other girl scoffed through her tears, “Why do you think I hate you?”

Jasper turned and gave Lapis a death glare through her tears, “Don’t. Just don’t right now. I don’t need that.”

Lapis nodded in understanding. This was about Jasper and not Lapis. And even if Jasper didn’t think she cared, she really did. But Lapis definitely wasn’t the problem right now.

The two were rather close and if Lapis reached out she could touch Jasper’s arm or her leg. She didn’t though, it wouldn’t have felt right. But Lapis did take advantage of the space between them and spread her legs out, resting them underneath Jasper’s computer chair and on one of the wheels. It was barely anything close to physical intimacy but Lapis hoped it would suffice.

“Can you talk about it?”

“Do you think I want to?” Jasper sniffed, feeling the pit in her gut grow ever larger.

“No, but you definitely need to. You really can’t keep this bottled up and I know for a fact that you haven’t talked about this with Peridot,” Lapis nodded her head towards the door and Jasper turned slightly to see her barely concealed girlfriend spying on their conversation.

It took a few minutes but Jasper rose from her uncomfortable slouched position and wiped the tears and snot off her face with her shirt sleeve (she thought she heard Peridot make an ‘eugh’ noise to that but she wasn’t sure).

“Alright. Um,” Jasper took another moment to try to compose herself further but it didn’t really work out and her words came tumbling out, “I don’t really know how to talk about this stuff. Where do I start?”

“You start with sitting by me,” Lapis patted a spot next to her on Jasper’s bed, “Or if you don’t want to, you can at least look at me.”

“And that’ll help?”

“It’ll help.”

Jasper untangled her legs and went over to her bed, sitting down next to Lapis. Until now, she didn’t really notice how much smaller the other girl was compared to her. It was something constantly noticeable with someone like Peridot but Lapis and her didn’t have too much one on one time where she could make connections like this. It made her feel...Awkward and only increased her thoughts of unbelonging.

The two were silent some more, letting the quiet permeate the area between them. Somewhere outside of the room Jasper could practically feel Peridot get impatient.

“I don’t think I should be an animator anymore.”

Lapis raised an eyebrow at that, “But you love it?” Animation and just art in general was practically one of the only things the two had in common with each other, and whenever they talked about it Jasper had always seemed genuinely happy. Conversations about that stuff could last for hours and, if Lapis was honest with herself, were actually fun.

“I do,” Jasper loved it so much. It had kept her grounded whenever she couldn’t find ground and other sappy metaphors like that, “I just don’t have a head for animation, and that’s like my major,” She threw her hands up and quickly scrubbed her face, “If I can’t figure out how to even start animating then what’s the point??” She felt just as drained as she sounded and she didn’t have the energy to remove her hands.

Lapis puffed her cheeks up and then blew out an exasperated sigh. She knew Jasper had suffered from clinical depression but she had never really connected the side effects to her before. Whenever she saw Jasper she was all grins and snide comments, enough to make Lapis forget that Jasper probably had more than one drawer full of empty antidepressant bottles. Talking to her personally like this really destroyed any over confident schtick that Jasper might have been playing up.

Lapis wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

“I get it. I mean I probably don’t _get it_ but I understand at least."

Jasper barely peaked out from behind her hands and made a questioning noise.

“Well, I’m an artist too you know? And I feel like I should quit all the time. Like when I think I’ve taken the perfect shot of, I don’t know, a butterfly on someones asscrack only to find out that there’s a million better shots of the same thing out there.”

Jasper let out a small laugh, more of giggle really, muffled by her large hands, and Lapis let herself feel a little proud of that.

“It’s not just animating, it’s art in general,” Jasper shrugged and finally took her hands away from her face, “My mom, she’s horrible, and always hated that I chose art over something boring like law or football.”

“I thought you used to play football?”

“Yeah and I guess I liked it then, but when you have to do something that someone is pressuring you very hard to do right, it’s just...Not fun anymore. Besides,” Jasper turned to Lapis and gave a small smile, something about it seemed sad to Lapis somehow, “You had to be a man to play football where I lived.”

“Well your mom’s a bitch. And yeah, football does suck. You should’ve gotten into table tennis. Or canoeing,” Lapis managed to deadpan, trying desperately to not drown in the mood that Jasper had set up.

It worked though and they both shared a smile that seemed to lighten the room up more than the light from the open door.

When Jasper looked away Lapis could see her knit her eyebrows and frown again. She put her hand on the larger girl’s knee, now feeling bold enough to maintain actual contact with her.

Jasper put her own hand over Lapis’ and for brief moment Lapis thought she was being pushed away, but Jasper only lightly squeezed her.

Lapis squeezed back.

“Are you okay now?” Lapis felt silly, she didn’t really solve any of Jasper’s problems. Only made a few off color jokes and forced the poor girl to open up to her.

Jasper turned towards her and grinned, open mouthed and toothy, but it didn’t exactly look genuine, “I’ll be fine. I think talking about it did help.”

Lapis looked at Jasper closer, lifting herself up to peer at the girl’s face, their noses close to touching.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking.”

“Looking for what?” Jasper was used to abnormal behavior like this coming from Peridot, but that girl always felt like she was from another planet all the time anyways. Lapis though? Other than to yell at her, she’d never really been that close before.

“A bad artist. I can’t seem to find one,” Lapis released Jasper’s hand and cupped her face instead, over exaggerating her search even further.

Jasper snorted and began breathlessly chuckling, “That’s so corny.”

Lapis leaned back a bit and smirked, “I’m a corny person.”

At that moment she had become hyper aware of her hands and the closeness between her and Jasper. She released the other girl and shot up from the bed as if something had bit her.

“You’re going to be fine now right? I need to get ready for work,” Lapis slowly began backing towards the door, avoiding both Jasper’s confused gaze and her feelings. She didn’t have to work for another four hours but Jasper didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah I’ll be fine,” Jasper shifted and reclined back onto her bed, arms behind her head, “I just need to be alone for awhile. Tell Peridot I’m okay.”

“Can do,” Lapis left Jasper to be by herself, sidestepping the eavesdropping Peridot and closing the door behind her.

Peridot, who looked flustered by being ‘caught’, ran a hand through her hair, “So?”

“You heard it didn’t you?” Lapis said sarcastically and started walking away only for her shirt to be tugged on.

“Did she stop crying?”

Lapis looked down and at the knitted eyebrows of her girlfriend, Peridot just looked so worried and sweaty (but honestly the sweat thing was kind of normal for her), “She’ll be fine, I promise. Jasper was just stressed and needs to sleep now.”

“O-oh,” Peridot released Lapis’ shirt and she smiled up at her gratefully, “Thanks for helping her out, I know you two don’t get along well…”

“It’s fine Peridot, I really didn’t mind.”

The small girl shrugged, “If you say so.”

They both parted ways and Lapis went back to her room, plagued with the simple memory of her and Jasper’s conversation and just how big the other girl’s hand had been on hers.


End file.
